BOXING; A Drama That Will Rival the Ring When Tyson Faces His Accuser

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No fighter since the days of Muhammad Ali has been dissected and inspected quite the way Mike Tyson has. At age 25 he has been one of those public figures who fascinate the masses and command constant attention.

While some of that has had to do with the primal aggression Tyson showed in becoming the youngest heavyweight champion ever, as much curiosity has focused on Tyson's personal life and problems outside the ring. There, as his own worst enemy, Tyson has sometimes seemed on the verge of short-circuiting that glorious career as a fighter.

That dire prospect surely looms as Tyson prepares to go to trial Monday in Indianapolis, where he is accused of raping an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant last July. If the prosecution makes its case, Tyson could go from being a multimillionaire boxing legend to a convicted felon facing up to 63 years in jail.

The courtroom proceedings will focus on the question of what happened in Room 606 -- Tyson's room -- at the Canterbury Hotel in Indianapolis during the early hours of July 19. Was it, as Tyson has insisted, a matter of consensual sex? Or was it, as the 5-foot-4-inch, 98-pound woman told the police, forcible sex?

Whatever answer the 12-member jury settles on, the events in the courtroom of Judge Patricia J. Gifford will be followed by reporters and television crews from all over the world. But of the more than 100 accredited journalists who will converge on Indianapolis this week, only a fourth of them will wind up in Gifford's 50-seat courtroom. Classic Contrast In Personalities

And unlike the rape trial late last year of William Kennedy Smith, which transfixed a nation of American viewers for days on end, the State of Indiana v. Michael Gerard Tyson will not be televised.

But what those who do witness the trial can expect to see is a courtroom drama steeped in the sort of classic personality contrasts that novelists and screenwriters tend to conjure up: real-life judicial theater in the heartlands.

Against the hulking Tyson, a onetime juvenile delinquent, will come the petite plaintiff, who by all accounts is a model teen-ager. She is a college freshman from Coventry, R.I., who, as one of the lawyers in the case put it, "looks like 12 years old -- not like 18. She's very articulate, very small. She's nice. She's sweet. She's naive."

No doubt the prosecution will emphasize the woman's background. As described by her lawyers, before enrolling in Providence College last September, she was a volunteer Big Sister to a foster child with special needs, an usher in her Baptist church, a varsity cheerleader, a student government officer and a softball player good enough to compete in a national tournament. From December 1988 to August 1990, she worked 16 hours a week as a K-Mart cashier while studying hard enough to win a full- tuition college scholarship. Woman's Credibility Could Decide Case

But on the stand she is likely to face a rigorous, if not hostile cross-examination by Tyson's defense team, led by Vincent J. Fuller, whose previous clients have included John Hinkley and Michael R. Milken. While the prosecution is expected to offer the testimony of medical personnel and hospital scientists to support its case, it will be the impact the complainant makes on the jury that will probably decide the case.

"If the jury doesn't believe her," said David Dreyer, a member of the prosecution team, "the other stuff doesn't make any difference."

By the accounts of her lawyers, these have not been easy times for the woman, who represented Rhode Island in the Miss Black America contest at the Indiana Black Expo where she met Tyson for the first time.

"She's very sensitive that she's about to become bait in a media feeding frenzy," said Ed Gerstein, a Rhode Island-based lawyer representing her. "Her fears and concerns are there all the time. Only on rare occasions can she escape, through school, family or teaching Sunday school. She's become very quiet. My understanding is she used to be outgoing."

David Hennessy, of Indianapolis, who also represents the woman, said his client has had to fight depression since July. "It's a day-to-day thing," said Hennessy. "Some days are good, some are not."

Although most newspapers have not published the woman's name, Tyson's promoter, Don King, has spoken it aloud, particularly in September when the fighter was arraigned.

"She saw it as a further violation," said Hennessy, "and ultimately it strengthened her resolve to see this through." Tyson's Past Could Be Aired

An Indiana rape-shield law prevents the defense from prying into the woman's sexual past during the trial. But another state law gives the prosecutor the latitude to rummage through Tyson's past, especially, as Dreyer said, "with the time span close to the time when he was charged."

From the early days of his boxing career, which started in 1985, Tyson has become entangled in a series of embarrassing incidents, many of them involving women. His marriage to the actress Robin Givens was stormy and very public, and he has frequently been the target of lawsuits brought by women who charged him with uninvited sexual advances.

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Reports about his behavior in Indianapolis reinforced many people's image of Tyson as a man out of control. In the days and weeks after the pageant, several contestants complained that Tyson had fondled them and made suggestive remarks.

"I don't care where you went in Indianapolis," said Ronnie Duncan, a sportscaster there for WTHR-TV, "everyone talked about his conduct, his womanizing."

"Tyson went on local radio, on WTLC, a black-oriented music station, and said, 'Gee, this is my first time here; I didn't know there were so many fine ladies.' He was in the city no more than three hours at the time."

Just what Tyson will have to say, if anything, about his 36 hours in Indianapolis last July remains to be seen. He is not obliged to testify and, if his defense team can successfully deflect the testimony of his accuser, he just may be held on the sidelines. Specifically the charges against Tyson are two counts of criminally deviate conduct, one count of confinement and one count of rape.

In the months since the Indianapolis incident, Tyson has seen his chance to regain the heavyweight title evaporate. A rib injury forced him to pull out of his Nov. 8 match against the champion, Evander Holyfield. Since then, he has done ringside commentary for the Showtime cable network, handed out Thanksgiving turkeys to poor people in several cities and last Monday and Tuesday huddled with his attorneys in Washington before returning to his home in Southington, Ohio. In Tyson's Defense, A Prominent Lawyer

One of Tyson's chief weapons will be Fuller, a member of the powerful Washington firm Williams & Connolly. Fuller, 60 years old, has specialized in civil and criminal litigation, with an emphasis on white-collar crime.

"Fuller's physical apperance is of a stately old-school gentleman," said Gary Gittelsohn, a lawyer and fight manager who has dealt with Fuller in a civil case involving Tyson's estranged manager, Bill Cayton. "That's his physical appearance. He is much more crafty than his physical appearance and I think by design tries to command the major presence in the courtroom, which includes a style calculated to even intimidate the judge. It's the kind of style where, if he makes a request of the bench, it's in a fashion -- with a certain look -- that says to the judge: 'You couldn't possibly rule against me because it'd be a reversible error.'

"And he sort of tries to adopt the courtroom as his own and it takes an equally sophisticated practioner to offset that strutting."

Fuller did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

In the courtroom yesterday, Fuller suffered a setback when the judge allowed evidence from an F.B.I. investigation to be used against Tyson. The defense contended that permitting the evidence would prejudice jurors because the F.B.I. does not ususally become involved in state rape investigations. The prosecution said the F.B.I. was asked to assist because local authorities did not have the financial resources to conduct all aspects of the investigation.

On the other side of the court will be Greg Garrison, a private lawyer who was hired by the Marion County Prosecutor's office to present its case. The county has contracted to pay the 44-year-old Garrison $70 an hour, with a $20,000 cap, for prosecuting Tyson. According to Rob Smith, a spokesman for the Prosecutor, Jeffrey Modisett, the money is a pittance compared with what Garrison would make in private practice for the long hours he has put into the Tyson case.

But Garrison is attracted to the spotlight and, going back to 1979, often was hired by the previous County Prosecutor, Stephen Goldsmith, to handle high-profile death-penalty cases. By Garrison's count, he took on five such cases and won them all, securing death sentences four times.

"I've seen a wide range of lawyers around this country," said Goldsmith, who was inaugurated as the Mayor of Indianapolis earlier this month. "But in terms of effectively emoting, Greg has the ability to distill a point or issue and very forcefully communicate." Aggressive Style For the Prosecutor

According to Athel Micka, a reporter for WISH-TV in Indianapolis, Garrison's is a style not unlike Tyson's in the ring.

"He gets right in your face and will do a lot of this," she said, forcefully thrusting her index finger several times.

Garrison's path to the law was a circuitous one. When he arrived at the Indiana University School of Music he had every intention of being a concert pianist. But after seeing the skills of other students, he said, "It didn't take me long to figure out I had the wrong address."

He ended up taking an undergraduate degree in secondary education in 1970, then enrolled in Indiana's law school.

While Tyson may be the most prominent fighter of his time, for Garrison, the adversary is Fuller. "He didn't get old and good by being stupid," said Garrison while seated in his office recently. "Hell, I know he's not worried about me. Yet."

A version of this article appears in print on January 22, 1992, on Page B00009 of the National edition with the headline: BOXING; A Drama That Will Rival the Ring When Tyson Faces His Accuser. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe